I don’t know when it started, but Taiwanese courts began tending to replace heavy sentences with light penalties. They would rather spend more time in every case discussing whether a criminal should be fined 100,000 or 1,000,000 NTD, bargaining with lawyers over the crime committed, but they are increasingly unwilling to be the “bad guy” and hand down heavy sentences, even though that is the responsibility given to them by the people.
As society gradually progresses and people’s level of knowledge becomes higher, they are increasingly unable to face their own brutal nature.
Even those who shout for human rights and the abolition of the death penalty also won’t talk about why they have the power to exploit victims.
Even after becoming professors, incidents of infringing on others’ rights still emerge endlessly. These people can also willfully infringe on others’ power for the sake of the values they believe in.
Some people, or rather some bad people, do not need the same level of protection as good people.
One of my past bosses occasionally liked to quote a phrase in his pep talks: “A white horse is not a horse.” This is a concept of logic. Similarly, it can be applied to good and bad people. Even if both are human, the treatment of bad people should not be compared with that of good people because bad people are not people.
Why Do Bad People Also Need Protection of Human Rights?
“Bad people also need human rights because the judiciary might be unfair.” This is a saying I often hear, and it is also one of the promotional slogans of the TAEDP. But whether it’s Cheng Chieh or today’s suspect Gong (no media has reported his name so far), there is absolutely no possibility of judicial unfairness. So why does the TAEDP still insist on speaking out for Gong? I think this is a means for the TAEDP to advertise itself to gain benefits (such as elections or recruiting members).
Using money as a weight on the scale might be a pragmatic approach after socialization, but it doesn’t necessarily satisfy universal values and natural justice. For example, if a rich second generation commits a crime out of amusement, the money he pays as compensation was not obtained through his personal effort. It is obviously completely contrary to reason to only compensate for the victim’s loss. This is a completely different matter from a mistake made due to temporary negligence from working hard.
Intentional crimes should subject criminals to substantial punishments, and heavy sentencing is required; only this is a procedure that conforms to legal justice.
Even if the judicial system has deficiencies today, what we should do is strive to fill these deficiencies and make more efficient and clear changes to the three-trial final judgment system, rather than denying the entire system because there is a possibility of error in the judgment.
Every time such a major case emerges, the TAEDP will surely exploit the victim, and this time is no exception.
Miao Poya, the legal affairs director of the TAEDP, argued this time that even without the abolition of the death penalty, there are still so many people committing crimes, trying to prove the uselessness of the death penalty, and stated that no one cares how monsters are formed, thus supporting the abolition of the death penalty.
In fact, this is Ms. Miao’s biased point of view. While she says no one cares how monsters are formed, she is also trampling on the passion and efforts of all social workers and volunteers. She not only exploits the victims but also tramples on those who help society. Then I personally really don’t know who in this society, besides criminals, she thinks is worth protecting. Isn’t this an anti-social personality?
A monster is a monster precisely because it contains an untraceable essence. No one wants another person to become a monster, but there are 23 million people in Taiwan alone, and countless people lack the assistance of friends and families. How can you “understand” people who don’t take the initiative to seek help? I think besides “greenhouse flowers,” I really don’t know who could say such high-and-mighty appeals.
Regarding the death penalty, the belief I have always held is that the death penalty is not a power given to us to murder another person; the death penalty is just a system in black and white. If a criminal violates a taboo that most people would not deliberately touch, it is the criminal’s own choice.
Conversely, isn’t it precisely the result of the TAEDP’s continuous demand for human rights (occasionally bringing out the EU to lecture Taiwan, even though the national conditions and cultures are completely different), making judges start to compromise and try their best to change sentences to life imprisonment without offending either side, resulting in the current social situation where these criminals can come out and continue to commit crimes after spending only ten or twenty years in jail.
Abolitionists also say: “Dead people cannot come back to life. Even if the criminal is sentenced to death, it cannot heal the pain of the victim’s family.” This is even more a statement that only a narrow egoist can say. The senseless passing of a life is not a pain that can be forgotten by sentencing the perpetrator to death or getting a large sum of compensation. This pain will always exist in everyone.
But at least, humbly at least, at least sentencing the perpetrator to death can allow the victim’s family to obtain a certain degree of psychological compensation! Why does such a simple principle become so insignificant in the eyes of those highly educated and eloquent intellectuals?
I really cannot understand whether the TAEDP’s thinking is free and advanced, or whether they ignore reality for the sake of pursuing an ideal, which is exactly the same as the Chunibyo (8th-Grade Syndrome) often spoken of.
Just as Cheng Chieh said, killing one or two people won’t lead to a death sentence. As a result, more criminals can commit crimes without scruples. This is exactly the absurdity that the TAEDP has brought to Taiwan. 迫